Unemployment among persons with a disability, 2011

The unemployment rate for persons with a disability was 15.0 percent in 2011, well above the figure of 8.7 percent for those with no disability.

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[Chart data]*Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race.

Among persons with a disability, the jobless rate for men (15.3 percent) was slightly higher in 2011 than the rate for women (14.7 percent). As is the case among those without a disability, the unemployment rates in 2011 for those with a disability were higher among blacks (23.5 percent) and Hispanics (20.3 percent) than among whites (13.7 percent) and Asians (11.0 percent).

Persons with a disability who had completed higher levels of education generally had lower unemployment rates in 2011 than those with less education. At all levels of education, persons with a disability had higher unemployment rates than their counterparts with no disability.

These data are from the Current Population Survey (CPS). To learn more, see "Persons With a Disability: Labor Force Characteristics — 2011" (HTML) (PDF). The data on persons with a disability are collected as part of the CPS monthly sample survey of about 60,000 households that provides statistics on employment and unemployment in the United States. Unemployed persons are those who did not have a job, were available for work, and were actively looking for a job in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. The unemployment rate is the number of unemployed persons as a percent of the civilian labor force (the employed plus the unemployed).